


To do it with mirrors

by Aegir



Series: Those who fight Monsters [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-04-04 07:09:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4129260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aegir/pseuds/Aegir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of one of Steve Rogers' first missions with the STRIKE team</p>
            </blockquote>





	To do it with mirrors

**Author's Note:**

> So I thought I was done with this series. Then this idea got up and bit me. Note 1: I am making completely shameless use of an improbable McGuffin. Note 2: This gets rather dark and has some moderately graphic violence.

_So this plan had better not be just kick the door in and start shooting._

The voice in Steve’s head sounded so like Bucky that Steve almost answered aloud, ‘That’s worked for us before.’ Even though he knew it wouldn’t work this time, even though that was the reason he was hunched over a computer screen in a SHIELD cubicle, examining the intel from all possible angles.

_Don’t start believing your own legend, Captain. This ain’t one of your stage shows._

“No, it isn’t,” Steve whispered. He’d grasped that seven decades too late.

He knew well enough it was the legend that had got him put in charge of the STRIKE team, over the heads of men with far more experience. It was good for SHIELD’s internal morale, which had taken a battering even though they’d won in New York in the end; the world was terrified of another alien invasion and so it was up to Steve to prove he was up to being more than a figurehead, and this was the first big test.

Steve steeled himself, closed his eyes, and remembered.

_Limbs flailing in air, face upward, mouth open…. Smaller and smaller, a back dot among the white dots, alive, beyond help, how long had it taken, how long had he known he was dying…._

Steve gasped, sucking in air.

He had to remember. He had to stop himself repeating his mistakes.

_Hate to break it to you, Steve, but no regular human could pull this off. So unless you’ve found a way to quadruplicate yourself the plan’s a bust._

_I don’t think quadruplicate is a word._

_Would I lie to you?_

It had always been Bucky who criticised and argued and forced Captain America to adapt his reckless, hopeful plans to reality. (Always except for the last time. Steve should have known, should have realised Bucky couldn’t play his usual part when the mission was Zola. Three men on a zip line, against the best of HYDRA tech. Only an idiot would think that would work.)

Bucky was gone, and now Steve had to correct himself. If he could make Bucky’s death teach him realism at last, that would count for something. His death had to mean something. Had to. Steve would come up with a workable plan, no matter how much sleep it cost him

*

“Team of three,” Steve said. “One should be me, and I’d like Romanoff and Rumlow for the others. If the internal plans are correct I believe we can prevent the explosives being activated when the terrorists realise they are under attack.”

Rumlow, frowning, offered only one comment. “It all depends on the sniper being able to take out the two top level guards. If the sniper fails, the whole mission is blown”

“Is that likely to be a problem?” asked Charlie Lucas, the most senior of the four agents. It was Romanoff who answered.  

“There’s only around a dozen people who could guarantee to make those shots.”

“That’s not so-” Steve began, but Romanoff interrupted him.

“Not a dozen in SHIELD. A dozen alive.”

The pause that followed held a blue jacketed ghost. But perhaps only Steve knew it.

“Clint Barton?” he said.

“Barton could do it,” Rumlow agreed. “If he’s back on active duty.”

“He’s not,” said Lucas.

“Barton seemed fine in New York,” Steve argued. He didn’t want to push Barton into anything he wasn’t ready for, but he also didn’t want SHIELD paranoia or red tape sidelining a good man.

“It hadn’t fully hit him in New York,” Romanoff said. “He’s not ready to be back in the field.” Steve nodded his acceptance, he assumed she would know. “What about Grant Ward?” Romanoff went on.

“Maybe,” said Rumlow. “I’d need to see his latest test scores, but Ward’s damn good. Last I heard though he was doing highly hush-hush work overseas.”

Steve glanced at Lucas. “I was told this mission was top priority.”

“Yeah.” Lucas nodded, leaning back in his chair. One of Fury’s immediate deputies, he had a relaxed, unbuttoned style that overlaid a sharp professionalism. “Gimme a few days to pull strings. I’ll get you your sniper, Cap.”

*

It wasn’t the technology. Everyone kept expecting Steve to be thrown by that, but Steve had had his body transformed by a medical experiment, seen men disintegrated in front of him by Tesseract powered weaponry, watched a man pull off his own face to reveal a skull. He had always been a quick learner, and the serum made him even quicker. He’d picked the new technology up just fine.

It wasn’t the social changes. It wasn’t the new buildings, at least not now he was out of New York. It was maybe a bit missing out on fifty years of popular culture, but he’d adapted to a different environment before.

It was the people. The lack of them. He still expected to report to Colonel Phillips, not Colonel Fury. He still kept rehearsing things he wanted to say to Peggy in his head. He still kept looking around for the other Howlies, the other day he’d felt a grin break out as he recognised Dernier in a corridor, but of course it hadn’t been Jackie and he’d ended up giving an autograph instead of a greeting.

His apartment had come fully furnished, and even with some interior decoration. Steve hadn’t made many changes. The most personal touches were the framed photographs he kept in his bedroom, the one of the Howling Commandos had a near constant smear over Bucky’s face where Steve can’t keep from touching the glass. Bucky wasn’t smiling in the picture, he was wearing his down the nose stare that a lot of people found intimidating. Steve had always been strangely fond of that expression.

“A dozen in the world. How about that.”

_Hey, I’ve always said I’m the best._

“You were, Buck. You were.”

*

“Personal question, Cap,” Rumlow said after the Quinjet had levelled out. “What is it with the damn shield?”

“Sorry, you’ll have to expand,” Steve said. Brock Rumlow would most likely have been in command of the STRIKE team, if it Steve hadn’t been parachuted in, replacing the man killed in Loki’s helicarrier attack. He could have made Steve’s life extremely difficult, and Steve appreciated that he hadn’t done that, and he hadn’t been all wide-eyed hero worship either. Rumlow, it seemed, judged by results, so Steve Rogers had better deliver them.

“When I was a kid,” Rumlow said, “we were told Captain America carried a shield and not a gun to show he didn’t kill, he only defended. Which to be honest I thought was pretty dumb. But now I’ve seen you in action, that shield of yours isn’t any less lethal than a gun, so why don’t you just use a gun instead of carrying a damn great metal disc around?”

“Got used to it, I guess,” Steve shrugged. “Captain America is supposed to stand out. And I never was one to follow the crowd.”

“Aaaand just maybe the other guys didn’t take a dude who was dressed the in flag and carrying a target seriously until it was too late?”

“Yeah, that as well.”

*

Steve would not admit to the wave of relief that rolled through him, as Rumlow reported “Sniper’s in position.”

He had argued hard that the sniper should travel with the rest of the team, but Lucas had said “Sorry, pal, deep cover.” Steve was a level six SHIELD operative, and he couldn’t be allowed to meet Grant Ward, even though the entire plan depended on Ward’s sniping skills, and he was sure most of the rest of the STRIKE team had met the man already. Of course he’d worked with secrecy before, with Resistance members who wouldn’t give their real names or show their faces in daylight. He trusted SHIELD, it was founded by his friends, and though Nick Fury probably didn’t tell his own left hand what his right hand was doing, Steve believed they had a common wish to protect people. He understood, he was a newcomer, however much legend he trailed, he couldn’t expect them to trust him fully just yet. But he was alone, even with a team of people around him, and he was lonely.

He was watching when the first guard dropped, then the second. No sound. Headshots, probably. This guy knew his job.

“Let’s go.”

Rumlow fired the grappling line. There was a sickening feeling in Steve’s stomach as he slid down it, ahead of the other two. Not like last time he told himself. He’d thought this through. He’d invited Rumlow and Romanoff to pick holes in his plan. These terrorists weren’t HYDRA, they didn’t have a Zola working for them.

They all landed safely on the highest point. The structure was basically at stone box on top of and at an angle to another box. It was old, Steve knew, built by a pre-Columbus civilisation, only recently discovered by the world, although the local tribes had never lost sight of it.

(Steve and Bucky had gone through a couple of years of being fascinated by unmapped South America, reading everything they could get their hands on. Now in the future so many of those spaces were filled in.)

Steve had memorised SHIELD’s plan of the internal layout, and he and the other two reached their target without being challenged. Romanoff got the crudely installed metal door open and there was nobody inside. Just a stack of explosives and on a plinth in the centre the thing they’d come for. Compared to the self-destructs in HYDRA bases Steve remembered it was rough and ready stuff, no automation even, someone would have to come in here to set it off.  

Romanoff carefully lifted the artefact off its plinth and stashed it, while Steve gave the order to move in through his com. “Get back to the top level,” he ordered Romanoff: of the three of them she was the one he would bet on getting back to the roof and letting herself down to ground level without being stopped or spotted. Then he and Rumlow took up positions in front of the door.

“I give it two minutes.”

“Ninety-seconds,” Rumlow gave a grim smile, full of the same fight anticipation Steve could feel thrumming in his own veins.

By Steve’s internal watch it was ninety-three seconds before an alarm started blaring, and close to another minute before feet pounded down the corridor, there were only three, surprised and easily taken down, although one of them managed to bark an alert into a small radio transmitter, clumsy tech compared to the STRIKE team’s com links.

The next attack was fiercer, but the stone walls were well suited to Steve’s shield technique. Vibranium clanged against stone, blurring with the bark of Rumlow’s gun, and the gurgling screams of their enemies, until it the echoes slammed back and forth inside Steve’s skull and even with the serum he knew he was going to have a killer headache. He and Rumlow weren’t fully used to fighting together yet, but they were improving all the time, not yet a single fighting unit, but partners, not just two men on the same side. The first wave was followed almost at once by a second, but they went down just the same.

Then it was still, bodies sprawled, some groaning and twitching, some with eyes glassed over. Steve knew he couldn’t dwell on it, but Rumlow was right: his shield had likely killed more men than Rumlow’s gun, crushing skulls, breaking spines, bursting internal organs. That’s what it was to be a soldier.

(Was that what Bucky had tried to tell him? _It’s war, Steve, not a back alley._ He hadn’t understood back then.)

Steve tried to listen for sounds of battle lower down, but even his serumed hearing was deafened. He asked for a report over the comlink instead.

“Mopping up,” Rollins told him. “There may be some surprises inside, but I reckon we’ve taken most of what they had to throw.”

“Right. Send a team in, in case anyone makes another try for the destruct room. I’ll join you below.” He turned to Rumlow, who gripped his gun easily, and gave a slight nod.

“I got this.”

The lower level was a battlefield, but few of the bodies were SHIELD. Prisoners were being herded into an inner courtyard. Rollins came over to report. Romanoff, the only person Steve had ever met who could saunter across a killing ground, sauntered over, with the carrier safely over her shoulder. A win.

A couple of hours later Steve took a last look round before boarding his ride out. There had been few prisoners: most survivors, Rollins reported, had taken cyanide, a practice Steve was all too familiar with from the war. They had combed the interior, taking everything that looked like useful intelligence, but there hadn’t been very much, if the group kept records, most must be elsewhere. He knew this, the sense of flatness as the adrenaline wore off. He felt ravenously hungry, and that was familiar too. Mission accomplished: that was what mattered. The world a little bit safer.

*

_“Do you really believe it,” Steve had said to Lucas. Steve had learned to believe in a lot of strange things, including weapons powered by a glowing blue cube, but he still had to ask._

_“It’s impossible to be sure until we at least get hold of the thing, but we’ve asked Thor and he thinks it’s possible. We can’t take the chance. A device that simply from one image of a person can slaughter them at any distance at any time is more than even Tony Stark can make. In the wrong hands it would be a disaster.”_

_“And SHIELD are the right hands?” Steve hadn’t quite forgotten the Tesseract powered weapons on the helicarrier._

_“SHIELD have the power to put it beyond human reach,” Lucas told him. “It’s too powerful to be left lying around.”_

_“It feels high-handed, just marching into another country like this.”_

_“If there was another way we would be using it. We don’t put agents’ lives on the line for laughs, Cap. The local government is too unstable to tackle the terrorists in its own yard, so what can we do? Let the world be held at gunpoint?” Lucas sighed. “I wish things could be as simple as they were in your war. But SHIELD is here to protect people.”_

*

On the way back the agents were all swopping quotes from some show called Buffy that Steve had heard of, but couldn’t disentangle in his mind from all the other shows people kept telling him were classics. All except Romanoff, who caught Steve’s eye and grinned.

“They don’t mean to shut you out, you know.”

“It gets easier,” Steve said, half statement, half question. Romanoff was Russian, this wasn’t the culture she’d grown up with, it must have taken some adapting for her as well.

“Sure. Wikipedia is your friend. Spend some time web surfing, and you’ll find you can fake it till you make it.”

Steve wasn’t sure he wanted to fake it. He wanted to stop feeling displaced, not pretend he wasn’t feeling it.  

“So, tell me if I’m right,” Romanoff said.

Steve put ‘right about what?’ into his expression.

“About the shield.” She grinned at him. “It’s like Clint and his arrows, isn’t it. You use the shield because you can. Because you can and other people can’t.”

“OK,” Steve admitted, and grinned back. “You got me.”

They weren’t his Commandos. But days like today, he could think this would be enough.

*

It had been a straightforward job. In, fire two shots, out. He hadn’t waited to watch the courtyard fight. His orders were not to participate, so his job was done.

Back at the nearest base, his report had been given. Now he waited again, sniper patient, and he listened.

A news programme in Spanish was playing. He followed that, it sounded more useful than the discussion of baseball scores happening in the room itself.

The man on the programme was expressing outrage at the murder of citizens, and the seizure of an artefact of huge historical and cultural significance. “ _Survivors of the massacre are claiming prisoners were shot in the head at point blank range, and that the attackers wore US style military uniform…._ ”

“Are you sure there won’t be trouble?” The speaker was nervous, the body screamed it when his voice did not.

“I’ve briefed Fury to expect a cover story just like that – there are disadvantages to always assuming that governments are lying. Even though they usually are.” The controller was called Lucas. They always introduced themselves.

“And Rogers? Rogers has a public profile, you can’t just disappear him.”

“Rogers will never hear that. It won’t be picked up by any US news outlets, and the internet is too full of crackpot conspiracy accusations for anyone to sift out the ones which aren’t crazy. I always said it would be a waste to wipe him. After missing seventy years, you believe whatever you’re told.”

“Like the cover story we spun him, said the woman who had a tablet in her hand. “Rather neat, considering that the element that thing is made of will save us so much time on Project Insight. Too bad he’ll never appreciate just how big a contribution he has made to global unity.” The tone of her voice was one he knew people used when they found something amusing. “Rogers has sadly limited vision.”

“He’s been a real find. A weapon that looks great on TV.”

The name Insight meant nothing. Nor did the name Rogers, but the description of Rogers as a weapon was curious. He logged it as possibly important.

“Not that we really needed him here, but it makes him feel useful. A ragtag bunch of militia guarding something like this, because it has local cultural significance and the government is too spineless to overrule! If we hadn’t taken it someone much worse would have.”

Was their weapon ‘Rogers’ one of those who took part in the courtyard fight? It sounded probable. If so this weapon must be good for close range work.

“What’s **he** looking at?” Hushed. The speaker hasn’t remembered how good his hearing is.

“Nothing. Why’d he be looking at anything?” He’d been careful with body language, arranging himself to appear neither threatened nor threatening. He had not watched them while they spoke. It had been for nothing, and the knowledge was familiar: carried the sureness this had happened many times before, and that the happening was bad. They were afraid of him. And they would hurt him.

“I don’t like it. It’s creepy.”

“We’re finished with him anyway,” said the controller getting up. He spoke then, because he knew this point. This was the point where he had nothing left to lose.

“How does a weapon look good on television?”

“When it’s a flag,” the controller said, smiling. It wasn’t a nice smile. It was a smile of scorn, and that was familiar too. But the controller had given him something. A flag was not a weapon, it was a symbol. So the man was both weapon and symbol? Did that make the man more valuable than him?

Did they scorn and hurt the other man, or was the symbol/weapon too valuable? His work was to protect people, there was a sense deep in his mind of that although he did not know how it got there. He was protecting people because he was strong, and so he should take the hurts to himself. But there was a growing sense of wrongness, and the sense was familiar, he knew it had come before, because there was the sense that the work he did for them was right and needed, and there was the other sense…

He heard the controller say, “Wipe him.”

 


End file.
